What is Marriage?
In 18th and 19th century America, well into the 20th century, people did not often marry for love or faith-based foundations or mutual interests, or love. They married to join good families, to produce heirs, and to have children to work on the family farm. I believe they often married fro survival, especially among the pioneers blazing trails to California, Washington State and Oregon.
To be sure, some people married for love, and some arranged or survival marriages saw the partners come to love each other or even to fall in love. However, this may not have been the usual pattern. Survival and the drive to reproduce are extremely strong; otherwise, the human race would become extinct.
As women began entering the professionals, obtaining the right to vote, etc., they expanded their mental horizons, some deciding that they could live without dependence upon a husband or father as a breadwinner. During World War II, American women went to work in the jobs men had left behind when they entered the armed services. After WWII, some women did not want to return to the roles of homemaker and/or mother. This may be one of the reasons that there were so many educational films made in the 1950s that encouraged young women to accept the role of homemaker and to follow etiquette of service to a husband.
However, there has never been a good answer offered to me as to what a woman that has no family at all should do. Some professionals have told me that such a woman should go work for a church, even unpaid. The question is then, how is the woman to support herself without an income or family, if she is working 40 hours per week for no pay and is ineligible for public assistance? There has been no answer to that.
Today, there are many women living alone in an American society that has become more fragmented since the 1960s. Women can earn a living and support themselves without entering domestic jobs (maid, nanny, etc.), living alone and...